Woof! Paw Haven Planned For State Street

Doggy daycare is coming to State Street in the form of a new pet boarding facility to be located on the East Rock-Fair Haven-Cedar Hill border.

Representatives from the new pet boarding and care company, Paw Haven, pitched their business to the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) Tuesday night in their bid to receive city permission to open the animal care service at 1175 State St.

The dog lovers won unanimous approval from the commissioners in their applications for a special exception to permit the use of an animal care service in a heavy industrial zone (IH) and for a variance to allow that use 222 feet from a residential zone, where 500 feet is currently required.

“There are so many dogs in the neighborhood,” said Jackie McFadyen, who testified before the commissioners along with fellow Paw Haven co-founders and Nash Street neighbors John McFadyen and Kevin Rocco. ​“Everywhere you turn, there’s a new puppy.”

Paw Haven, the group said, would give city pet owners a reliable spot to place their pups when they’re out of town for business or vacation that doesn’t require a 40-minute round trip to Branford.

The company will start off providing dog boarding, cat boarding, and dog daycare, they said, and then move into pet grooming and training services in the near future.

The applicants said they will be located on the second floor of the former trolley barn that U‑Haul purchased in 2016 and converted into a self-storage and truck rental facility. The pet care business will take up roughly 9,500 square feet of that 320,000-plus square foot industrial building.

That location is well suited for animal care and boarding not just because of its ample vacant indoor and outdoor open spaces, Rocco said. It’s also well-placed right across the street from the burgeoning tech hub the DISTRICT, where Rocco himself works and runs a medical device company called BIOREZ.

“This is very much in line with the development of that area,” he said. And in line with what he found he himself also desperately needed after becoming the proud owner of a ​“large, very active dog” named Maya two-and-a-half years ago.

A host of area dog owners followed Paw Haven’s pitch with their own endorsements of the need for a pet boarding and care center.

DISTRICT CEO and co-founder Eric O’Brien, the ​“very proud owner of a rambunctious Labrador,” said people who work out of the James Street tech hub often ask about bringing their dogs to work. That’s not necessarily because they want their dogs sitting in on business meetings, he said. But rather because they don’t want to leave their dogs home alone for most of the day.

“This will bring more life and energy over at 1175,” he said, ​“to complement what we’re doing across the street.”

Hope Menninger, a physician’s assistant at Yale’s Smilow Cancer Hospital and the the owner of an 8‑year-old border terrier named Griffin, said that she and her husband Charlie often find themselves in need of a place to board their dog. Her hours are long and unpredictable, Menninger said, and her husband, an airline pilot, is sometimes called out to work with barely a moment’s notice.

“We’ve often struggled to quickly find a solution for our dog to be taken care of,” she said. Paw Haven would help her and her husband do exactly that.